Wilson Center for Science and Justice at Duke Law

Today marks 5 years since George Floyd was murdered by a Minneapolis police officer, sparking a nationwide conversation on the role of policing in our society. Today, as we remember George Floyd, we reflect on what has and has not changed. Learn more from the Marshall Project:

Five Years After George Floyd’s Murder, Police Reforms Are Rolled Back As reforms stall in some states, the U.S. Supreme Court just made it easier for police to be sued — and perhaps easier for police to defend themselves.

"The Suspension Clause is quite restrictive permitting Congress to suspend habeas corpus only in exceptional circumstances. The President cannot suspend the writ," Faculty Director Brandon Garrett told NPR this week. Read the full piece at

DHS secretary misstates meaning of habeas corpus under Senate scrutiny Facing sharp questioning from Democratic lawmakers, the director of Homeland Security incorrectly described the constitutional right as a presidential authority to deport individuals.

Many thanks to the Supreme Court of Chile and the Chilean Directorate of International Affairs and Human Rights for inviting faculty director Brandon Garrett and Duke Law School Dean Kerry Abrams on "The Value of Due Process." Professor Garrett spoke about his latest book: Defending Due Process: Why Fairness Matters in a Polarized World.

Many thanks to the City Law School, City St George's, University of London for hosting faculty director Brandon Garrett at their Symposium last week: AI and Modern Technologies in Criminal Justice: Opportunities and Human Rights Implications. Professor Garrett spoke about AI, error aversions, and his latest book Defending Due Process. Learn more about the book here: https://wcsj.law.duke.edu/defending-due-process-why-fairness-matters-in-a-polarized-world/

Congrats to all of our wonderful RAs who finished up the spring semester last week. This past semester, our student research assistants in our JustScience Lab worked on a variety of subjects including reentry, presumptive drug field tests, a Shotspotter evaluation, clemency and parole, police interrogation, and more. Thanks so much to all of our students!

Can the Trump administration suspend habeas corpus? “The quick answer couldn’t be clearer. Only Congress can suspend the writ of habeas corpus,” says our faculty director Brandon Garrett in a new interview with TIME. “It has played a crucial role in many emergencies and wars during our history. And courts have consistently emphasized that habeas provides its strongest protections when the executive seeks to detain people without a trial."

Read the full piece at

What Is Habeas Corpus and How Is It Under Threat? Stephen Miller said the Trump Administration is “actively looking at” the option of suspending habeas corpus.

Our faculty director, Brandon Garrett, spoke to the New York Times this week, noting that the government’s removal procedures give immigrants fewer ways to challenge their deportation than people are given in other types of legal matters.

“I can’t imagine anyone tolerating a system where, if a person does not pay a traffic ticket in 12 hours, they would just lose their driver’s license permanently,” Mr. Garrett said. “Or if a person is arrested, and does not get a lawyer in 12 hours, they are just automatically convicted and sent to prison without a trial....Unfair process tends to create all sorts of expensive problems that multiply over time, in addition to being very unfair, and of course also unconstitutional."

Read the full piece at

Government Notices to Migrants Fall Short of Due Process, Legal Experts Say Venezuelan migrants were given English-only notices with limited time to file court challenges, according to a newly unsealed declaration.

April marks . Earlier this spring, we were honored to join the Duke Decarceration Project and Duke Law's Criminal Defense Clinic in welcoming Shariff Ingram, Speakers Bureau and Policy Coordinator for the Youth Sentencing and Reentry Project, and Kolanda Wooten to discuss extreme sentencing, incarcerating children, and re-entry after decades in prison. Both Mr. Ingram and Ms. Wooten had been sentenced to life without parole as children before receiving clemency or resentencing. Many thanks to them for sharing their powerful journeys from childhood incarceration to advocacy. Read the full recap at our website: https://wcsj.law.duke.edu/news/recap-life-after-life/

A new study out from our some of our behavioral health faculty and collaborators, including lead author Jeff Swanson as well as Maddy Stenger, Michele Easter, and Marvin Swartz, shows significantly higher rates of mental illness among incarcerated individuals with more specificity than most previous studies.

"We found that schizophrenia-spectrum disorders were at least three times more common in prison than in people who hadn't been arrested or incarcerated in the past year. Prison is no place to recover from such a serious illness. What's new about this study is more specific diagnostic information to help address the U.S. mental health crisis where we find it," says lead author Swanson.

Learn more about this groundbreaking study:

Incarcerated individuals report significantly higher rates of mental health diagnoses than other community members A new national epidemiological survey provides a demographic and diagnostic picture of people living with mental ill health in prison, those with criminal legal involvement in the last year, and those with no criminal legal history in the last year—finding significantly higher rates of five mental...

Our policy analyst Marcus Pollard recently attended the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers' Mid-Winter Meeting and presented his work on wrongful convictions. He spoke about the gaps he found in the 11 exonerated cases he examined that occurred since North Carolina passed progressive reforms in the early 2000s as well as the need to update those progressive reforms to be in in line with current best practices. For more, check out our report on the subject:https://wcsj.law.duke.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Wrongful-Convictions-in-North-Carolina.pdf

Many thanks to Behavioral Health Faculty member Michele Easter and student research assistant Abigail Lee for presenting their work on research "Death by Distribution" charges across North Carolina to our JustScience Lab. This has been a collaborative effort across the Center. Abigail, in particular, worked on a python script to organize the data of charges for all 100 counties that include Death by Distribution. This is just the latest coding project Abby has worked on for us over the last few years.

Our student research assistants bring a variety of skills to a wide range of projects including coding, research, writing and other kinds of assistance. We're grateful for all of them!

"We knew that ending the cash bail system would free many people who would otherwise have ended up in jail. After the changes, nearly 80% of misdemeanor arrestees were released on bond. But not only did liberty benefit, so did public safety.

In the years of our work studying these reforms, we consistently found that both misdemeanor arrests and rearrests have declined. More discovery, better public defense, and ending cash bail all improved both fairness and safety."

Last week in the Albany Times Union, Faculty Director Brandon Garrett wrote about how improving fairness in the pretrial process can also benefit public safety. Read the full piece:

Commentary: Pretrial discovery improves public safety Data from Houston, Texas, indicates that improving fairness can bring down crime.